a shot from an iPhone does not do it justice but here is a photo from this rare eclipse which is billed as the longest eclipse in this century and it passed through Hong Kong this morning.

CNN reported on this too. Below my iPhone edition photo!

ARMONK, NY & HONG KONG - 15 January, 2009 - IBM (IBM: NYSE) has announced its intent to acquire the strategic messaging service assets of Outblaze, Ltd, a privately held provider of online messaging and collaboration services, based in Hong Kong. Building on IBM Lotus’ market leadership in messaging software, the acquisition will accelerate the delivery of affordable, Web-based e-mail services in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.

With more than 10 years of experience, Outblaze was one of the first companies to offer a fully hosted multilingual e-mail service and now supports over 40 million users. Outblaze’s proven online Web-based messaging service offers unique capabilities for branding and administration. Today, Outblaze operates one of the largest online service platforms for the provision of private-label email, collaboration and social media services for other service providers, telecommunications operators, corporations, academia, media and publishing companies.

The Outblaze messaging service will be part of IBM Lotus’ Project “Bluehouse.” “Bluehouse” is IBM’s online social networking and collaboration service designed for business and currently in open beta (http://bluehouse.lotus.com). “Bluehouse” helps people work together more quickly and easily beyond the boundaries of their organizations. Within the service people can share files, chat, participate in online meetings and network over the Web.

“The acquisition of these Outblaze assets further demonstrates Lotus’ commitment to delivering secure, scalable online solutions and will help accelerate delivery of collaborative services, with little to no IT involvement,” said Bob Picciano, General Manager, IBM Lotus Software and WebSphere Portal. "People are more connected, but getting the right information and expertise, particularly outside of your own organization, can pose quite a challenge. IBM will help companies overcome the barriers of time, distance and affiliation to easily work together and deliver better business outcomes,” added Picciano.

The combination of the Outblaze assets and “Bluehouse” will provide customers with more choices in messaging solutions. Enterprise clients will be able to use IBM as a single provider for all their messaging needs, whether on-premise or online, serving a range of user needs from occasional to full-time. Small business customers will get an simple to acquire, integrated set of collaboration services that allow them to easily work with their network of customers and partners. Partners such as telecommunications operators and Internet service providers will be able to package and sell collaborative services to their clients under their own brands.

Further detail on how these new assets will become part of the IBM online portfolio will be divulged at the Lotusphere conference in Orlando next week.

So on my first day inside HKO, trying out the game, the first order of silliness was lining up and taking a group photo as below, so we all lined up, and everyone took group pictures.

Some players referred to it as the reason they liked HKO, the little things like this which are so different from other mmo’s in the social aspect of gameplay. What I found interesting is the time (and length) everyone was prepared to invest in a fun group activity that simply had no benefit to gaining levels, money, status or otherwise. It was just for fun and that’s what Hello Kitty Online is about now isn’t it?

Here is a screenshot of a bunch of people building a house together in a social setting in Hello Kitty Online, in this case the house is almost finished but it takes many hours to finish it as a group, and days if you do it solo! Here 5 of us are constructing the house together, after having gathered the necessary resources, people would work together to collect materials and then put them to good use in constructing the house, which can then be decorated inside.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Sega Toys has produced a home planetarium, particularly in a place like Hong Kong where stargazing is simply impossible. For my 2 year old Son it’s excellent because he loves looking at stars, and he also gets to learn about the Stars as I can add new constellations. The quality is surprisingly good, you need to place the Star “Egg” as I call it (as it’s shaped like one) high up if you have a high ceiling as it will get out of focus very quickly. I bought it for about 9,000 yen which is approx. 80 USD and it’s been great value for money, it comes in cool black or white.

• Size: 110 (Width) ×160 (height) ×110 (depth) mm
• Weight: about 660g (battery is excluded)
• Power Input: 4AA batteries not included
• Projection Distance: 2m to about 2.3m
• Projected Area: about diameter 270cm
• High brightness white 1W LED
• 2 disks included 

Nowadays you can set up a complete Open Source based PC for minimal cost, using Ubuntu or a Linux Variant, Open Office for your Word Processing needs and a variety of Browsers and E-mail clients like Mozilla and Thunderbird are all freely available such that you could have a PC that is completely made up of free software.

There must be an opportunity for charity organizations to take advantage of this as a low-cost, highly efficient system in place, the 100 dollar PC alone isn’t going to cut it, second hand PC’s could be donated and free OS could be installed and then given away to individuals and families who truly need it.

I can’t seem to find anyone who has done this, why has this not been done? You could take advantage of giving old PC’s new life as Linux is far more efficient than Windows for most basic computing needs such as getting introduced to programming, web browsing and office work?

The entrance to this playground is in Kennedy Road, Mid Levels which is part of Hong Kong Park that also hosts the Aviary and connects at the other end with Pacific Place.

There is a decent playground in there which is enjoyed by many kids and has multi-level playgrounds set for different age groups.

The surrounding environment is green yet in the heart of Hong Kong.

Quarry Bay Park is a nice location in Hong Kong to take your kids too. A seawalk viewing Kowloon side with a park and small play areas that eventually lead to tennis courts, soccer field and a playground that adjoins the Taikoo Shing Mall.

For Kids, this is one of the better public playgrounds that I have seen. Quite large, safe and usually quite crowded, but not unreasonably so.

Bringing your kids for an outdoor walk in Hong Kong and then leading up to a playground is a blessing, usually I find it quite challenging to find reasonable public play areas for Kids in Hong Kong (outside of the private facilities), this one I can recommend for parents of young children, most of the kids there appeared to be between the ages of 3-7

I’ve seen an article some time ago about 3rd party Baby Accessories produced by others with some element of Ferrari design but when I walked into a store to buy stuff for my toddlers I found this! There was no price tag on it, I didn’t bother to ask the price since I figured it would be unreasonable expensive for, well a baby seat, I somehow doubt a 1 and/or 2 year old would have a deep appreciation for that kind of a carseat…but I guess it’s really for the parents!